The Woman Who Loved Jesse James

by Cindi Myers

  “Annie was a schoolteacher,” Frank said, a note of pride in his voice. He himself was something of a scholar, and had intended to go on to university before the war interfered. A prodigious reader, he was fond of Shakespeare, and often quoted from the Bard’s plays. “She was educated at the Independence Female College. Her father is Judge Sam Ralston. They have a big farm in Independence.”

  I had never met a woman who had been to college before. Most of the teachers I had known had barely completed eleven grades before sitting for their teacher’s certificate, which was issued by the county. If her father was a judge and owned a large farm, that meant Annie came from money, though one look at her would have told me that. So how had she ever become involved with the notorious outlaw, Frank James? Did she even know how Frank earned his living?

  After supper, the men retired to the front porch to smoke cigars, while Annie and I cleared the dishes. I wondered if she had grown up with servants to do such menial chores, and if she expected as much from Frank. But she didn’t hesitate to tie on an apron and join me at the sink.

  “How did you and Frank meet?” I asked as I filled a dishpan with hot water.

  “We met at a horse race.” She scraped leftovers into the slop bucket.

  “A horse race?” I couldn’t completely hide my astonishment. Race tracks were not places generally frequented by genteel young ladies from good families.

  “Yes. I enjoy the races, whenever I can attend.”

  Jesse and Frank were both wild for horse racing. They regularly entered their own horses and bet on others, losing prodigious amounts of money in the space of an afternoon.

  “You must have made an impression, if you could distract Frank from a horse race,” I said.

  “Actually, I scolded him because he was blocking my view of the track.”

  I studied her more closely, trying to imagine this delicate creature berating a man said to be one of the most feared in the state. “How old were you?”

  “I was seventeen.” She picked up a cup towel and prepared to dry the dishes. “All I knew was a man in a big hat was blocking my view of the horses in a race on which I’d placed a wager. I told him he either had to remove his hat or his person—I didn’t care which.”

  I laughed. “What did he do?”

  “He told me if I wanted to see I should come stand beside him instead of behind him. So I did.”

  “And that was it?”

  “After the race—which my horse won and his did not—he asked permission to call on me.”

  “And now you’re married.” I plunged my hands into the hot, soapy water and began to wash the dishes.

  “Now we’re married. But if my father had had his way, we wouldn’t be. When he learned the man coming to court me was the notorious Frank James, he ordered him to never come near me again.”

  I smiled in sympathy. “He didn’t know he might as well tell the sun not to rise as to tell one of the James brothers not to do something.”

  “I think Frank might have respected my father’s wishes if I’d agreed,” she said. “But I didn’t.”

  “Why didn’t you?” I asked. “I mean, you scarcely knew him.”

  She was silent for a moment, the only sound the squeak of linen against a china cup as she dried it. “When my father looked at Frank, he saw a man who had broken the law,” she said finally. “A man who had killed other men. I saw a quiet, modest man with a keen intelligence. A man who respected the strength of my own mind and will.”

  “Yes.” I nodded. Maybe because they had been raised by such a strong, forceful woman, both Jesse and his brother did not dismiss women as readily as some of their contemporaries. “Sometimes I read the newspaper descriptions of Jesse and it’s as if I’m reading about a stranger,” I said. “He’s been described as ‘ruthless’ and ‘blood-thirsty’ and I think this can’t be the same man who stays up all night, babying a sick horse, or the man who plays tag in the pasture with his younger half-brothers and sisters. The man they write about isn’t the one who sends me beautifully composed letters, or brushes out my hair for me at night.”

  “I wonder.” Annie’s hands stilled, the cup towel dangling idly from her fingers. “Does love cause us to judge them differently, or is love a lens through which we see them more clearly?”

  “Maybe it’s a little of both,” I said. Impulsively, I reached out and squeezed her hand. “I’m glad Frank married you. It’s good to have someone close who understands.”

  She nodded. “I’m hopeful now that they have families and responsibilities, Frank and his brother will settle down and not be so restless and on the lookout for trouble.”

  My heart went out to her. Hadn’t I so recently shared those same hopes? “I don’t think marriage is enough to change a man,” I said. “They are what they are, and we must accept that.”

  She nodded. “I expect it won’t be easy at times, but I’m determined to stand by him.” A smile tugged at the corners of her mouth. “I’ve made the biggest wager of my life and I don’t intend to lose.”

  Marriage to Jesse introduced me to a new world—I took on not only the new roles of wife and mistress of my own household, but I became a part of the universe over which the James brothers ruled, a world in which finances were determined by whatever they could take, people were judged by which side of the war they had supported and notoriety was welcomed as equally as it was feared. While Jesse loved being famous, Frank preferred the anonymity that was vital to their continued survival. Yet, in the state of Missouri at least, the name James had a power that guaranteed the brothers a measure of safety against those who pursued them, an invincibility that kept us balanced between caution and recklessness.

  Jesse’s friends and allies became my friends as well. Among my favorites was Clel Miller, who had ridden alongside Jesse and Frank during the war. He was an affable man with sleepy brown eyes and hair that curled around his head like a halo. I also welcomed Cole Younger, the man who had asked me to dance at my sister Lucy’s wedding. Cole was a frequent visitor to our home, along with his brothers, John, Jim and Bob. The men spent many an evening in our parlor or on the front porch, smoking and talking of their days riding with Bloody Bill. Often Annie was there as well. She and I sewed or drank tea in the kitchen and talked into the night. Even now I look back on those companionable evenings fondly. This was the contented life I’d imagined during those years when I’d waited for Jesse.

  As the sons of a Baptist preacher, Frank and Jesse seldom drank, and Jesse was so indisposed to use profanity that he had earned the nickname ‘Dingus’ when he rode with the bushwhackers, after a made-up word he had used as a curse.

  So I was startled one evening to hear Jesse’s voice coming from our parlor, raised in anger. “God dammit, Buck, what’s wrong with you? Don’t you see what an opportunity this is?”

  “An opportunity to get killed,” Frank answered. “It’s too reckless.”

  “That’s why we’re the only ones who could pull it off. It’s reckless and daring, and profitable.”

  “I worry about you, Dingus. You’re starting to believe your own press.”

  Annie was not with me that night, so I retreated to the kitchen alone and shut my ears to their discussion. The harsh words disturbed me, and every sense told me danger was near. I told myself everything would be fine. I didn’t want to know the details of Jesse’s activities, at least before they happened.

  Two days later Jesse kissed me good-bye. “Buck and I are going to take a little ride, maybe pay a visit to Mama for a few days,” he said.

  I frowned. “You’re going to see your mother?”

  “We may stop off a few other places while we’re away, but we’ll be sure to stop in at the farm for a few days. I’ll tell Ma you said hello.”

  “Yes, do.” No doubt, Zerelda would have a few choice words to say to her son about his wife. I wondered if she’d met Annie yet. Did she approve of her rich, educated blonde daughter-in-law any more than she had of me, her po
or, dark namesake?

  “You’ll be all right here?” Jesse asked.

  I nodded. “Of course. But I’ll miss you. Hurry home.”

  “I will, Sweetheart. I’m always anxious to get home to you.”

  Being alone in the little house felt strange after so many weeks in which Jesse and I had been virtually inseparable. Annie must have felt the same, for she came and asked if she could spend the night. “I don’t like being at our place by myself,” she confessed. “Besides, I hope with you for company I’ll worry less.”

  “Why are you worried?” I asked. I wasn’t enamored of the idea of Jesse leaving me alone to call on his mother, but she was, after all, his mother, and it was to be expected that a dutiful son like Jesse would visit her.

  “You don’t really believe they took this trip just because they missed their mother, do you?” Annie asked.

  I flinched at the scorn in her voice. “What else would they be doing?” I asked.

  Annie took both my hands in hers and looked me in the eye. “Zee, you do know what Jesse does for a living, don’t you?” she asked.

  I jerked out of her grasp. “Of course I know. I’m not some naïve child.”

  “I didn’t mean to offend you,” she said. “Jesse’s so protective of you I thought he might have managed to keep the true nature of his activities from you.”

  “Jesse and I don’t have secrets like that,” I said. “I know what he’s done, though we don’t talk about it.” I hesitated, then added, “Does Frank talk to you about his work?”

  She shook her head. “No. But I keep informed as best I can. I listen to things he says, make note of people he talks to. That way I’m never completely in the dark.”

  “You spy on your husband?” I stared at her.

  She shrugged. “I don’t think of it as spying. I learn what I need to know.”

  “The less I know the better,” I said. “I can’t worry about what I don’t know about.”

  I could tell by her disapproving look that Annie didn’t think much of this philosophy. “Then I suppose you don’t want to know where they went tonight,” she said.

  “They said they were going to see their mother.”

  “Oh, I expect they’ll get there eventually, but first they’re going to rob a bank. Or a train. Or maybe something else. That part I didn’t hear.”

  “How do you know this?” I asked, astonished.

  “I overheard Frank tell Jesse they’d need provisions for several days ride, and for Jesse to bring his maps.”

  “That doesn’t mean they’re planning a robbery.”

  Her violet eyes bore into me. “They both lost a lot of money at the track last week, and the rent on our houses is due at the end of the month. They have to get money from somewhere.”

  I shifted in my seat. “That doesn’t bother you?” I asked. “That they rob other people to support us?”

  She shrugged. “The men in charge of the banks and railroads took plenty from all of us during the war, and after, too. My father lost almost everything. I don’t feel much pity for them.”

  I nodded. She made Frank and Jesse’s wrongdoing sound so logical—something anyone with sense would do if they had the nerve. When she explained things this way, it didn’t sound so much like sin—no more than my having sex with Jesse before we married had been a sin, at least—I’d been taught it was wrong, but since nothing bad had come of our actions, I told myself it wasn’t the sort of thing that put my soul in any real danger.

  We learned soon enough that Annie’s prediction had been right: two days after they left us Jesse, Frank, and a third man (some say Cole Younger, some his brother Jim, and some their friend Arthur McCoy) waylaid a horse-drawn omnibus outside of Lexington, Missouri, ordered the passengers to disembark, then robbed them.

  This proved a fine entertainment for folks from Lexington, who gathered on a bluff above town and watched the scene unfold. Amazingly enough, no lawmen were dispatched to stop the robbery-in-progress, and the three bandits rode away. No one was injured, and even the victims, though mourning the loss of their possessions, commented on the dash and gallantry of the robbers.

  The audacity of the robbery, carried out in front of such a large audience, captured the imagination of newspapers around the country. The Lexington Caucasian reported: “The whole proceeding was conducted in the coolest and most gentlemanly manner possible . . . Prof. Allen doubtless expresses the sentiments of the victims when he tells us that he is exceedingly glad, as he had to be robbed, that it was done by first class artists, by men of national reputation.”

  The authorities, however, were not so impressed at being made to look the fool. Lieutenant Governor Johnson sent St. Louis police officers in pursuit of the James brothers. They were at their mothers’ farm by this time, protected by the loyalty of friends and neighbors, and by Zerelda’s assertions in letters to journalists across the state that her boys were innocent of any wrongdoing—and any man who said otherwise would have to answer to her.

  Thus was established a pattern for our married life those first few years. Frank and Jesse made frequent trips out of town. I no longer pretended these expeditions were entirely innocent, but unlike Annie, I had no desire to know the details of their activities until both men were home safe. Jesse handed over money and jewelry to me with the polite fiction that he’d been lucky at the track, or had made a profit on the sale of a horse. I thanked him and enjoyed spending his largesse, and refused to think at all of where the money had come from, or about the danger we all might be in.

  The year ended with the hold-up of the Kansas Pacific Railroad in December, near Muncie, Kansas. The bandits blocked the tracks with old railroad ties, then signaled the train to stop well shy of this barrier. They robbed the Wells Fargo Express safe of $30,000.

  This robbery led the governor of Kansas, Wells Fargo, and the Kansas Pacific Railroad to offer rewards for the capture of the robbers, said to be Frank and Jesse James, Cole and Bob Younger, and several others. When I read this in the papers, a chill swept over me. Times in Missouri were still hard, and while the threats of lawmen had no power to make Jesse’s friends or neighbors betray him, money had a different kind of power I wasn’t sure everyone could resist.

  Jesse came into the room just then. “What’s the matter, Zee?” he asked. “You’re pale as a ghost.”

  “What’s this about a reward?” I asked. “For ‘the capture of Jesse or Frank James, Cole or Bob Younger.’” I read.

  “Idle posturing.” He waved away the words as if swatting a fly. “The railroads are furious we’ve taken back a little of their greedy gains. The local folks are cheering us on.”

  “But a reward . . .”

  Jesse took the paper from me and pulled me close. “It doesn’t mean anything,” he said. “Nobody would have the nerve to ever collect it. They know they’d have to answer to us if they did. And no one wants to cross the James or Younger brothers.” He kissed the end of my nose. “You don’t have to worry about a thing. Let’s just be happy and enjoy our first Christmas as man and wife.”

  He began to unbutton my dress, distracting me from thoughts of newspapers and rewards and danger of any kind. I saw through his manipulation, but I didn’t care. I didn’t want to think about these things, as if ignoring them would somehow keep us safe.

  We celebrated Christmas with Frank and Annie, with a goose Annie prepared, which was over-cooked, but none of us mentioned it. We attended church together that evening, where we sang hymns and celebrated Christ’s birth day.

  I had another reason for great happiness at this time. After so many years of hoping, I was finally expecting a child. Jesse was beside himself with joy at the news. When I told him, he waltzed me around the room, then immediately insisted I sit down with my feet up, lest I grow too tired.

  I laughed at his concern, but I wasn’t without fears of my own. I was constantly sick to my stomach, unable to keep anything down. Jesse, worried that I would fall seriously ill while he
was out and about during the day, paced the floor of our bedroom one evening in early January, fretting. I had spent most of the day in bed, too weak to even drag myself to the kitchen to make a cup of tea.

  “Maybe you should go to your mother’s for a while,” he said. “So she can look after you.”

  “I don’t want to leave you,” I protested. “Besides, Mother is too busy running her boarding house. The last thing she needs is someone else to look after.” At my mother’s house, I wouldn’t be the cherished prodigal daughter returning home to be lovingly pampered. I’d merely be Sister, another mouth to feed and body to house and child to claim another fraction of my mother’s scarce attention.

  “Then we should both go to my mother’s. She and Charlotte can look after you well enough.”

  I shuddered at the thought of facing my mother-in-law while my emotions and my body were in such turmoil. “Your mother doesn’t even like me,” I said. “Why would she want to look after me now?”

  “She’s mellowed a great deal since the wedding,” he said. “Now that she’s grown used to the idea of you as my wife. And she’s excited about a new grandchild.”

  Still, I resisted the idea, until I became so weak I fainted, and came close to falling down the front steps. The incident terrified both me and Jesse, and he insisted I go to his mother.

  I didn’t have the strength to resist. “Promise me you’ll join me there as soon as possible,” I said before I boarded the train.

  “I promise.” He kissed my cheek. “Just remember,” he said. “You’re my wife and you’re going to be the mother of my child. Nothing Ma says can change that.”

  His words gave me strength. Zerelda might not like me, but she could never take Jesse away from me now. Whatever battles she sought to wage didn’t matter, because we both knew she had already lost the war.

  Jesse’s stepfather, Reuben, met me with the wagon and drove me to the farm. He was a docile, agreeable man, considered somewhat ‘simple’ since his near-death at the hands of Union militia during the war. His placidness suited Zerelda, allowing her to take command of the household without having to pretend to defer to him.